My 600-lb Life star Lonnie Hambrick has said the show was an “awful experience”.
Lonnie, whose top weight was 516lbs, went on the eighth series of the TLC reality TV show with his brother John in a bid to shed the pounds. The star had a gastric sleeve and skin reduction surgery and said he was “grateful” and “thankful” as it had changed his life for the better.
But in a string of TikToks he revealed that he also had some gripes about the programme.
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“Our episode, we were triumphs but they still treated us like we were garbage,” he claimed, suggesting he and John had to fit the narrative laid out for them.
“They had a story to tell and this is how all TV works,” he said. “The producers write a story… and then you come in and you film whatever storyline they are portraying. They needed a villain and my mother was the villain.”
Lonnie also suggested that there wasn’t all that much in the way of support and that an awful lot of the work was done by the participants themselves at home, without much guidance.
He went on: “Those people are in it for the money and that’s OK. It would have been better if they had been honest about that… they lied to us, there was a lot of promises that they didn’t keep.” Lonnie also said “nothing is paid for”, adding: “Me and my insurance paid for my surgeries.
“Me and my brother, we were successful and we are triumphs,” said Lonnie, who is now a hairstylist in Texas. “And that’s, for one, because we were given time to succeed.” But he claimed that despite his success they “really really treated us terribly”.
“Thank God that John and I survived that,” he went on. The star said his brother was “traumatised” by his experience and now likes to lead a private life and doesn’t do much on social media. But he assured fans of the programme that his sibling was doing “great”.
Daily Star has reached out to Warner Bros Discovery for comment.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
